Your Success Can Be Predictable, Even Inevitable

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Is motivation the cause of success or the result of success?Pexels

Jeff Haden is the ghostwriter behind more than 50 books, some of which could be among your favorites. But you’ll never know for sure because, well, he’s a “ghost” writer.

But he also produces a ton of great content under his own by-line, notably as contributing editor to Inc., as a frequent writer for Entrepreneur, as a top LinkedIn Influencer, and as author of several business books.

One reader said Jeff’s writing lives at the intersection of science, emotion, success, and irresistible storytelling. I found that assessment is also true in Jeff’s conversation. His approach to the subject of achievement seems to echo one of my favorite Will Durant quotes: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Rodger Dean Duncan: Your suggestion that motivation is not the spark or precondition of success, but is rather the result of success, flies in the face of all the rah-rah achievement pep talks people hear. Give us an illustration of how motivation works this way.

Jeff Haden: I talked with Venus Williams about her career and her various pursuits. She said she had never had a lightning bolt moment of inspiration or motivation. She didn’t suddenly think, “My life’s purpose is to be the #1 tennis player in the world.” She just wanted to be a better tennis player.

Then I thought about all the people who tell me they hope to accomplish something big but are waiting for that lightning bolt to strike. And I realized that only in rare cases do incredibly successful people suddenly find their passion and life’s purpose. Most of them develop their passions and interests slowly, over time, simply by trying something, wanting to get better at, and getting daily doses of motivation through enjoying small successes.

In short, motivation isn’t something you get. Motivation is something you create, on your own, by following a process that allows you to improve, bit by bit. Or if you want to put it another way, motivation isn’t something you have before you set off to achieve a goal. Motivation is something you get from achieving goals, however small.

That thought in itself is incredibly motivating, because it means you already have everything inside you that you need to achieve your goals.

Jeff Haden.

Duncan: Most achievement protocols involve some form of goal-setting. Yet you say the road to success is to “forget about the goal.” What does that mean?

Haden: Goals are obviously important, but the real value of a goal is in how it informs the process you will create to achieve it.

Interestingly, most high achievers instinctively create processes that focus on the day-to-day and not the end result. If you focus solely on your goal, you realize just how great the distance is between here, where you’re starting, and there, where you hope to someday be. Then that gap is so wide that it’s incredibly demotivating. If you want to run a marathon and today you can run only a mile, thinking about someday needing to run 26 miles is hugely daunting. Think about just how far you need to be able to run and you’ll quit.

That’s why Venus’s dad kept Venus and Serena from playing too many junior tournaments. He wanted them to focus on developing their skills, not on winning or losing.

In the early days of Metallica, Kirk Hammett was still taking guitar lessons from Joe Satriani and since he didn’t have a car, he rode his bike 25 miles one-way to get there.

Bert Jacobs and his brother John started their Life is Good apparel and accessories company by driving a minivan up and down the coast and selling t-shirts out the back.

The list goes on of people who focused on creating a process that would lead to long-term success, and then working that process and finding motivation in small, day-to-day successes.

That’s how they kept going when others would have quit.

Duncan: Decisions, you say, are behavioral change killers. So you advocate establishing routines that eliminate the need for decisions. Why?

Haden: We all have a finite amount of mental energy available for exercising self-control. Some of us have less, some have more. But we all eventually run out of willpower steam. That’s why the more choices you need to make during the day, the harder each one is on your brain and the more you start to look for shortcuts. Then you get impulsive. Then you get reckless. Then you make decisions you know you should not make. But it's as if you just can’t seem to help yourself.

In fact, we can’t help ourselves: We ran out of the mental energy we need to make smart choices. That’s why the fewer choices you're forced to make, the smarter the choices you can make when you really do have to make decisions.

Say you want to drink more water and less soda. Easy: Keep three water bottles on your desk at all times. Then you won't need to go to the refrigerator and make a choice.

Or say you struggle to keep from constantly checking your email. Easy: Turn off all your alerts. Or take your mail program off your desktop and keep it on a laptop across the room. The harder it is to check, the less often you’ll have to decide not to check.

Choices are the enemy of willpower. So are ease and convenience. Think of decisions that require willpower, and then take willpower out of the equation completely.

There's a clear pattern in high achievement behavior..

Duncan: In working on personal change like weight loss, you suggest keeping a journal. What role does this kind of daily self-assessment play in staying on the path to accomplishment?

Haden: Two basic factors are at play. One, we tend to improve what we measure. (Or in behavioral science terms, the Hawthorne effect.)

Just as importantly, keeping track of what you’ve done gives you yet another chance to feel good about what you’ve done. Jerry Seinfeld’s goal is to write a joke every day. He puts an X on a calendar each time. That’s his marker of success. He loves to see a long string of Xs. It feels good, because it shows he did what he set out to do that day.

And it motivates him to do it again tomorrow.

Duncan: In an age of specialization, many people tend to invest their time and energy in only a single focus. What’s the danger of that approach?

Haden: Specialization is eventually the enemy, especially on a professional level. The current professional landscape values generalists over specialists. Change occurs quickly. Skills that are valued today are obsolete tomorrow.

Managers can’t be good only at managing a certain function. They need to be good leaders. Employees can’t be good only at performing a certain function. They need to embrace an entrepreneurial mind-set and constantly reinvent themselves.

When specific knowledge is more and more a commodity—and it is, because information is more widely available than ever—the people who can synthesize and blend and apply a broad base of skills to a variety of functions and problems are the people who are most valued.

Plus, focusing on just one thing can get really boring.

Duncan: You seem to be a fan of Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs. How does that model relate to your view of motivation?

Haden: Maslow doesn’t necessarily inform how I view motivation, but it definitely impacts how we should choose goals. If you can’t pay your bills, financial and career stability should be your goal. If your health is poor, getting fitter should be your goal.

Get the basics in place. Then reach for a less “basic” goal.

You’ll start from a better, healthier, stronger foundation—and you’ll be more likely to achieve the goal you choose if only because you won’t be as stressed or distracted by those basic problems you’ve ignored.

Duncan: You extol the value of an EPD—Extreme Productivity Day. Exactly what is that, and how does it really affect someone’s productivity both short- and long-term?

You can do more than you think..

Haden: Maybe you need to complete a major project. Or tackle a task you've been putting off. Or you just need to crank out a ton of work in a short period of time.

That’s the perfect time for an extreme productivity day.

In general terms, an EPD is a day when you focus on just that one thing by putting things in place—and preparing yourself—to do only that one thing. Until it’s done.

The cool thing about an EPD is that it resets your internal limits. We all reach a point where we think we can’t do more. But as the SEALs say, when you think you can’t do more, you’ve used only about 40% of what you truly have in you.

After one or two of them, you’ll realize you’re capable of a lot more than you thought. Which is a very cool thing.

Duncan: One year you did 100,000 push-ups and 50,000 sit-ups. What lesson did you take from that experience that can be applied in other areas of aspiration?

Haden: One, that I’m kinda stupid.

Two, when you create a routine, stick to that routine, and grind it out day after day after day. You can put together huge numbers. And as I said before, every day you get to feel good about yourself, because you accomplished what you set out to accomplish that day.

Daily success, and the intrinsic reward that comes with it, is incredibly motivating. Daily successes create a virtuous cycle that makes it easier to do what you need to do tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, until one day you lift up your head and realize you've accomplished what once seemed impossible. Even to you.

That principle can be applied to anything where numbers are involved. If you want to build a bigger network, make it your process to contact two people every day. If you want to get more leads, make it your process to call five potential customers every day.

What you decide to do is up to you. Just make sure you create a routine that gets you to what, at least at the start, seems like an insurmountable finish line.

Then all you have to do is stick to your routine.

Do that. Keep your head down and just do the work, day after day after day—and your success is assured.

For the past 40 years I’ve consulted and coached leaders from the factory floor to the boardroom in some of the world’s best companies in multiple industries. Basically, I help people get good stuff done while avoiding the Dilbert Zone. Early in my career I covered politics...